BBMP sets up Covid control rooms in all 27 Assembly constituencies in city

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has established a 24x7 control room in all the 27 Assembly constituencies to assist Covid-19 patients or their family members.

The decentralised facility is expected to answer all queries related to Covid-19 such as vaccination, testing centres, and requests for a mobile triaging unit, ambulance, or hearse van service, among others.

The 27 control rooms are likely to reduce the volume of calls that are currently being received by executives in the zonal war rooms and central war room (helpline number 1533).

The BBMP will share the data of all positive cases with each of the 27 Medical Officers of Health (MOH) and re-distribute it to 141 primary healthcare centres (PHCs) for field visits, isolation monitoring and physical triaging.

BBMP Chief Commissioner Gaurav Gupta, armed with the experience of handling the Covid second wave, said the number of cases has risen sharply from 200 to about 15,000 in the last 15 days, in line with the increase in other major cities in the country and across the world.

“Hospitalisations continue to be low although the number is slowly increasing.

“The problems of the oxygen saturation level dropping are not being witnessed in this wave,” he said, adding that paediatric cases continue to remain at about 12% of overall cases and there is no significant increase over the earlier cases.

As of now, the BBMP has reserved 3,237 beds in government hospitals, 2,696 beds in government medical colleges, 13,540 beds in private hospitals, and 8,594 beds in private medical colleges for Covid-19 patients.

Of the total 28,067 beds, 6,255 beds have been made available for allotment. The authority to reserve beds has now been given to the 27 control rooms.